As such, it is necessary that CCSC upgrades its website facilities so as to further improve their chances of securing the bid and to be able to handle the incoming traffic surge. It is recommended that CCSC considers basing its services on a commercial cloud service in order to accommodate the incoming online traffic.
A cloud service is a type of service that is made available to users on demand via the Internet. The services are hosted from a cloud provider’s servers as opposed to being provided from a company’s own servers. Many modern cloud services are designed to provide easy and scalable access to various applications, resources and services. In addition, these services will be fully managed and hosted by the cloud service provider. There are many benefits to consider when investing in a cloud service for the company.
Firstly, basing the company website in a cloud service will lead to reduced costs for IT expenses. Rather than purchasing expensive systems and equipment for your business, such as servers and expensive softwares, you can reduce your management and maintenance costs by utilizing the resources of the cloud computing service provider. This is due to several factors, for example, the expenses for system upgrades, new hardware and software may be included in the contract. In addition, because the services and hardware are allocated by the cloud provider, the company may not need to hire or invest in a large IT division to manage the website. This also leads to reduced energy consumption costs since there will not be any on-site servers to keep maintaining continuously. The funds saved from this move could be better invested for other areas in the company, for example better sporting amenities or upgrading the location to accommodate a larger audience.
Another major advantage to hosting the company website in a cloud service is flexibility of service. The company can scale up or down the operating and storage requirements whenever it is required to better suit the current situation, allowing a high degree of flexibility. For example, if there is a forecasted growth in incoming traffic in the near future, the storage capabilities of the service can be increased to accommodate the change. Using cloud services can free up more time and resources as well, so more time can be spent running the company and handling other major projects.
Besides that, cloud computing allows the company’s employees to be more flexible in their work practices. For example, the employees will have the ability to access data from home, on holiday, or via the commute to and from work. This gives the employees a greater deal of flexibility, as now they have the option of working from home if any emergencies or incidents occur. Employees could even work on the go should the need to travel arise. This will lead to greater productivity for the company, which in turn will bring more profits to the business.
Despite all these benefits, it should be noted that switching to a cloud based service has its share of risks that should not be ignored. One major risk that can arise is unauthorized access to sensitive data. Cloud services have aggregate data from many small businesses. While many businesses believe they are letting larger, more capable firms which are more capable of protecting their data settle their security risks, the truth is that using a cloud service increases the value of that service as a potential target. This concentrates risk on a single point of failure; shutting down the cloud provider. A disaster at a cloud provider, such as a mass information leak or a Directed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack can affect every one of its customers. For example, the iCloud leak in 2014 released a lot of private and sensitive images to the public, causing a massive scandal. Malicious acts like these could be perpetrated by hackers or inside threats, or even caused by malware.
Server downtime can also occur and cause major losses for the company. Relying on a cloud service for a business-critical task puts the viability of the business in the hands of two outside services: the cloud vendor and the Internet Service Provider (ISP). If the internet access goes down, then the vendor’s cloud service will be inaccessible. It is extremely damaging if the cloud service is needed to process customer payments or access important data. Another major cloud risk is that the cloud provider can go down as well. The causes can range from bad weather, DDoS attacks, or even a system failure. These problems will decrease company productivity, and cause major losses for the company as both employees and users cannot access the service.
The current leading cloud service providers for business are IBM Cloud, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform. These services are owned by some of the biggest tech companies; which are IBM, Amazon, Microsoft and Google. There are advantages and disadvantages to each provider which will be discussed in detail.